Pages

Monday, March 6, 2017

Keep or Chuck? Purging My TBR

Recently I was in need of some new books to read, so I began perusing my TBR to see if any of the titles were readily available at my library. There were a couple, so I picked them up without a second thought. But when I got home, I realized I wasn't as excited to read those books as I had been when I first added them to my TBR, especially after looking at some Goodreads reviews.

But they were on my TBR! That means I wanted to read them, right?

I think we as serious readers, in an effort to remind ourselves of ALL the books out there, put so many books on our TBRs, even if there's no chance we could ever read that many! If it looks even remotely interesting, it goes on the list, which just gets bigger and bigger.

But how often do you go back through your TBR and cull those books that no longer appeal to you? Maybe it's a genre you're not reading a lot of these days, or the book is really getting poor reviews, or you finally read the blurb after basing your initial add on a pretty cover. Maybe they've been there so long you've forgotten about them! Do you actually delete those books from your TBR?

I'm going through a bit of a bookish crisis with my TBR right now. There were plenty of books I added because they sounded great at the time, but now they're not so appealing (like those books I just got from the library). Logically, I should delete them and make room for new books. But - just because I don't want to read them right now doesn't necessarily mean I won't want to read them in the future, right? Maybe I shouldn't delete them, so I don't forget about them? I just don't know! And, my TBR is actually quite small compared to others, so having those extra titles on there for awhile longer isn't hurting anything.

So even though the title of this post is about purging my TBR, in actuality there is very little purging going on. Perhaps in the future I can be a little more decisive!

Do you ever purge your TBR, or does it just keep getting bigger? How do you decide what titles to ditch?﻿

I've actually recently done this on my GR TBR - a lot of the titles that are second or third or even beyond in the series when I haven't read the first I decided to clear it out. I think they were a few that I know I would never go back to, but I haven't done a full purge yet. It's a work in progress.

I do exactly the same thing. Sometimes I don't even remember adding the books to my TBR in the first place, which is even worse, lol. I occasionally go through my Goodreads TBR and purge, especially once more and more reviews come out on the books. I'll usually remove any titles that have really low ratings overall, especially if I see that readers I trust have given them low marks.

Ahh, I'm super bad at purging my TBR myself! For me, it's mostly because I'm a huge mood reader, which means my excuse is usually "Well, I don't like this now, but who knows, I may be in the mood for this some day so I don't want to remove it from my list just yet". But then somehow, I still don't end up reading it soon... I should definitely be more strict with myself :)

I can be exactly the same way. I don't want to delete things for fear I may want to read something like it in the future and then I don't remember it. but, there are probably books on there that I will never read, if I really thought about it.

My TBR list is definitely way out of hand too. I haven't brought myself to delete them just yet but I probably should. The only ones I really remove are the ones where I saw a spoiler and found out it has a topic or situation in it that I really don't like to read about.

I rarely ever delete books from my TBR. Like you, I feel like, well, maybe I'm not so interested *now*, but my tastes have shifted/expanded before, so maybe they'll shift again and I'll want that book in the future! And I figure it's not like it's hurting anything to leave the books on my TBR or my kindle or whatever. I did recently delete a few non-SFF books from my TBR though since I put those on the list back when I was still figuring out my tastes, and now I pretty much only read SFF. And I've deleted a few that I came across and was kind of like... what even is this? This doesn't look like my kinda book, why is it on my list? Lol.

I was having the same issue so I organised my TBR on Goodreads into three 'shelves' - the 'top shelf' for the books I'm most interested in reading, the 'middle shelf' for the ones I'm interested in but not desperate to read straight away, and the 'bottom shelf' for the ones I might want to read eventually. I then go through my top shelf every so often and any that I'm not still really interested in I'll move to one of the other shelves. That way I'm not getting rid of it from my TBR completely but I know that all the books I most want to read are in the one place. That helped me a lot!

I purge my wishlist on Goodreads all the time for all of the reasons you listed. And I have a large physical TBR pile in my house that I just purged. I was holding onto books given to me by family and friends, books picked up at yard sales and library sales and clearance counter books. At the time they all sounded right up my alley, but over time it gets out of control and overwhelming so I purge. My feelings change, my tastes change and my moods change so my piles have to change too.

I purge my wishlist on Goodreads all the time for all of the reasons you listed. And I have a large physical TBR pile in my house that I just purged. I was holding onto books given to me by family and friends, books picked up at yard sales and library sales and clearance counter books. At the time they all sounded right up my alley, but over time it gets out of control and overwhelming so I purge. My feelings change, my tastes change and my moods change so my piles have to change too.

I rarely purge my Goodreads TBR list. Every now and again I'll come across a book on there that I've completely changed my mind about (because of reviews, author behavior, or stale subject matter) and I'll remove them-- but mostly I always think I'm going to get to them SOMEDAY :(

Oh man, I have a ton of books on my GR To Read shelf. I'm pretty quick to add books to it. I started purging a couple of years ago but never made it all the way through them. If I made time to do it now I would probably still end up keeping more than deleting lol. I always think 'maybe I'll read it someday'.